r/emotionalneglect Jun 25 '20

FAQ on emotional neglect - For anyone new to the subreddit or looking to better understand the fundamentals

2.1k Upvotes

What is emotional neglect?

In one's childhood, a lack of: everyday caring, non-intrusive and engaged curiosity from parents (or whoever your primary caregivers were, if not your biological parents) about what you were feeling and experiencing, having your feelings reflected back to you (mirrored) in an honest and non-distorting way, time and attention given to you in the form of one-on-one conversation where your feelings and the meaning of those feelings could be freely and openly talked about as needed, protection from harm including protection against adults or other children who tried to hurt you no matter what their relationship was to your parents, warmth and unconditional positive regard for you as a person, appropriate soothing when you were distressed, mature guidance on how to deal with difficult life experiences—and, fundamentally, having parents/caregivers who made an active effort to be emotionally in tune with you as a child. All of these things are vitally necessary for developing into a healthy adult who has a good internal relationship with his or her self and is able to make healthy connections with others. They are not optional luxuries. Far from it, receiving these kinds of nurturing attention are just as important for children as clean water and healthy food.

What forms can emotional neglect take?

The ways in which a child's emotional needs can be neglected are as diverse and varied as the needs themselves. The forms of emotional neglect range from subtle, passive behavior to various forms of overt abuse, making neglect one of the most common forms of child maltreatment. The following list contains just a handful of examples of what neglect can look like.

  • Being emotionally unavailable: many parents are inept at or avoid expressing, reacting to, and talking about feelings. This can mean a lack of empathy, putting little or no effort into emotional attunement, not reacting to a child's distress appropriately, or even ignoring signs of a child's distress such as becoming withdrawn, developing addictions or acting out.

  • Lack of healthy communication: caregivers might not communicate in a healthy way by being absent, invalidating, rejecting, overly or inappropriately critical, and so on. This creates a lack of emotionally meaningful, open conversations, caring curiosity from caregivers about a child's inner life, or a shortness of guidance on how to navigate difficult life experiences. This often happens in combination with unhealthy communication which may show itself in how conflicts are handled poorly, pushed aside or blown up into abusive exchanges.

  • Parentification: a reversal of roles in which a child has to take on a role of meeting their own parents' emotional needs, or become a caretaker for (typically younger) siblings. This includes a parent verbally unloading furstrations to their child about the perceived flaws of the other parent or other family members.

  • Obsession with achievement: Some parents put achievements like good grades in school or formal awards above everything else, sometimes even making their love conditional on such achievements. Perfectionist tendencies are another manifestation of this, where parents keep finding reasons to judge their children in a negative light.

  • Moving to a new home without serious regard for how this could disrupt or break a child's social connections: this forces the child to start over with making friends and forming other relationships outside the family unit, often leaving them to face loneliness, awkwardness or bullying all alone without allies.

  • Lying: communicates to a child that his or her perceptions, feelings and understanding of their world are so unimportant that manipulating them is okay.

  • Any form of overt abuse: emotional, verbal, physical, sexual—especially when part of a repeated pattern, constitutes a severe disregard for a child's feelings. This includes insults and other expressions of contempt, manipulation, intimidation, threats and acts of violence.

What is (psychological) trauma?

Trauma occurs whenever an emotionally intense experience, whether a single instantaneous event or many episodes happening over a long period of time, especially one caused by someone with a great deal of power over the victim (such as a parent), is too overwhelmingly painful to be processed, forcing the victim to split off from the parts of themselves that experienced distress in order to psychologically survive. The victim then develops various defenses for keeping the pain out of awareness, further warping their personality and stunting their growth.

How does emotional neglect cause trauma?

When we are forced to go without the basic level of nurturing we need during our childhood years, the resulting loneliness and deprivation are overwhelming and devastating. As children we were simply not capable of processing the immense pain of being left out in the cold, so we had no choice but to block out awareness of the pain. This blocking out, or isolating, of parts of our selves is the essence of suffering trauma. A child experiencing ongoing emotional neglect has no choice but to bury a wide variety of feelings and the core passions they arise from: betrayal, hurt, loneliness, longing, bitterness, anger, rage, and depression to name just some of the most significant ones.

What are some common consequences of being neglected as a child?

Pete Walker identifies neglect as the "core wound" in complex PTSD. He writes in Complex PTSD: From Surviving To Thriving,

"Growing up emotionally neglected is like nearly dying of thirst outside the fenced off fountain of a parent's warmth and interest. Emotional neglect makes children feel worthless, unlovable and excruciatingly empty. It leaves them with a hunger that gnaws deeply at the center of their being. They starve for human warmth and comfort."

  • Self esteem that is low, fragile or nearly non-existent: all forms of abuse and neglect make a child feel worthless and despondent and lead to self-blame, because when we are totally dependent on our parents we need to believe they are good in order to feel secure. This belief is upheld at the expense of our own boundaries and internal sense of self.

  • Pervasive sense of shame: a deeply ingrained sense that "I am bad" due to years of parents and caregivers avoiding closeness with us.

  • Little or no self-compassion: When we are not treated with compassion, it becomes very difficult to learn to have compassion for ourselves, especially in the midst of our own struggles and shortcomings. A lack of self-compassion leads to punishment and harsh criticism of ourselves along with not taking into account the difficulties caused by circumstances outside of our control.

  • Anxiety: frequent or constant fear and stress with no obvious outside cause, especially in social situations. Without being adequately shown in our childhoods how we belong in the world or being taught how to soothe ourselves we are left with a persistent sense that we are in danger.

  • Difficulty setting boundaries: Personal boundaries allow us to not make other people's problems our own, to distance ourselves from unfair criticism, and to assert our own rights and interests. When a child's boundaries are regularly invalidated or violated, they can grow up with a heavy sense of guilt about defending or defining themselves as their own separate beings.

  • Isolation: this can take the form of social withdrawal, having only superficial relationships, or avoiding emotional closeness with others. A lack of emotional connection, empathy, or trust can reinforce isolation since others may perceive us as being distant, aloof, or unavailable. This can in turn worsen our sense of shame, anxiety or under-development of social skills.

  • Refusing or avoiding help (counter-dependency): difficulty expressing one's needs and asking others for help and support, a tendency to do things by oneself to a degree that is harmful or limits one's growth, and feeling uncomfortable or 'trapped' in close relationships.

  • Codependency (the 'fawn' response): excessively relying on other people for approval and a sense of identity. This often takes the form of damaging self-sacrifice for the sake of others, putting others' needs above our own, and ignoring or suppressing our own needs.

  • Cognitive distortions: irrational beliefs and thought patterns that distort our perception. Emotional neglect often leads to cognitive distortions when a child uses their interactions with the very small but highly influential sample of people—their parents—in order to understand how new situations in life will unfold. As a result they can think in ways that, for example, lead to counterdependency ("If I try to rely on other people, I will be a disappointment / be a burden / get rejected.") Other examples of cognitive distortions include personalization ("this went wrong so something must be wrong with me"), over-generalization ("I'll never manage to do it"), or black and white thinking ("I have to do all of it or the whole thing will be a failure [which makes me a failure]"). Cognitive distortions are reinforced by the confirmation bias, our tendency to disregard information that contradicts our beliefs and instead only consider information that confirms them.

  • Learned helplessness: the conviction that one is unable and powerless to change one's situation. It causes us to accept situations we are dissatisfied with or harmed by, even though there often could be ways to effect change.

  • Perfectionism: the unconscious belief that having or showing any flaws will make others reject us. Pete Walker describes how perfectionism develops as a defense against feelings of abandonment that threatened to overwhelm us in childhood: "The child projects his hope for being accepted onto inner demands of self-perfection. ... In this way, the child becomes hyperaware of imperfections and strives to become flawless. Eventually she roots out the ultimate flaw–the mortal sin of wanting or asking for her parents' time or energy."

  • Difficulty with self-discipline: Neglect can leave us with a lack of impulse control or a weak ability to develop and maintain healthy habits. This often causes problems with completing necessary work or ending addictions, which in turn fuels very cruel self-criticism and digs us deeper into the depressive sense that we are defective or worthless. This consequence of emotional neglect calls for an especially tender and caring approach.

  • Addictions: to mood-altering substances, foods, or activities like working, watching television, sex or gambling. Gabor Maté, a Canadian physician who writes and speaks about the roots of addiction in childhood trauma, describes all addictions as attempts to get an experience of something like intimate connection in a way that feels safe. Addictions also serve to help us escape the ingrained sense that we are unlovable and to suppress emotional pain.

  • Numbness or detachment: spending many of our most formative years having to constantly avoid intense feelings because we had little or no help processing them creates internal walls between our conscious awareness and those deeper feelings. This leads to depression, especially after childhood ends and we have to function as independent adults.

  • Inability to talk about feelings (alexithymia): difficulty in identifying, understanding and communicating one's own feelings and emotional aspects of social interactions. It is sometimes described as a sense of emotional numbness or pervasive feelings of emptiness. It is evidenced by intellectualized or avoidant responses to emotion-related questions, by overly externally oriented thinking and by reduced emotional expression, both verbal and nonverbal.

  • Emptiness: an impoverished relationship with our internal selves which goes along with a general sense that life is pointless or meaningless.

What is Complex PTSD?

Complex PTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder) is a name for the condition of being stuck with a chronic, prolonged stress response to a series of traumatic experiences which may have happened over a long period of time. The word 'complex' was added to reflect the fact that many people living with unhealed traumas cannot trace their suffering back to a single incident like a car crash or an assault, and to distinguish it from PTSD which is usually associated with a traumatic experience caused by a threat to physical safety. Complex PTSD is more associated with traumatic interpersonal or social experiences (especially during childhood) that do not necessarily involve direct threats to physical safety. While PTSD is listed as a diagnosis in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnositic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Complex PTSD is not. However, Complex PTSD is included in the World Health Organization's 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases.

Some therapists, along with many participants of the /r/CPTSD subreddit, prefer to drop the word 'disorder' and refer instead to "complex post-traumatic stress" or simply "post-traumatic stress" (CPTS or PTS) to convey an understanding that struggling with the lasting effects of childhood trauma is a consequence of having been traumatized and that experiencing persistent distress does not mean someone is disordered in the sense of being abnormal.

Is emotional neglect (or 'Childhood Emotional Neglect') a diagnosis?

The term "emotional neglect" appears as early as 1913 in English language books. "Childhood Emotional Neglect" (often abbreviated CEN) was popularized by Jonice Webb in her 2012 book Running on Empty. Neither of these terms are formal diagnoses given by psychologists, psychiatrists or medical practitioners. (Childhood) emotional neglect does not refer to a condition that someone could be diagnosed with in the same sense that someone could be diagnosed with diabetes. Rather, "emotional neglect" is emerging as a name generally agreed upon by non-professionals for the deeply harmful absence of attuned caring that is experienced by many people in their childhoods. As a verb phrase (emotionally neglecting) it can also refer to the act of neglecting a person's emotional needs.

My parents were to some extent distant or disengaged with me but in a way that was normal for the culture I grew up in. Was I really neglected?

The basic emotional needs of children are universal among human beings and are therefore not dependent on culture. The specific ways that parents and other caregivers go about meeting those basic needs does of course vary from one cultural context to another and also varies depending upon the individual personalities of parents and caregivers, but the basic needs themselves are the same for everyone. Many cultures around the world are in denial of the fact that children need all the types of caring attention listed in the above answer to "What is emotional neglect?" This is partly because in so many cultures it is normal—quite often expected and demanded—to avoid the pain of examining one's childhood traumas and to pretend that one is a fully mature, healthy adult with no serious wounds or difficulty functioning in society.

The important question is not about what your parent(s) did right or wrong, or whether they were normal or abnormal as judged by their adult peers. The important question is about what you personally experienced as a child and whether or not you got all the care you needed in order to grow up with a healthy sense of self and a good relationship with your feelings. Ultimately, nobody other than yourself can answer this question for you.

My parents may not have given me all the emotional nurturing I needed, but I believe they did the best they could. Can I really blame them for what they didn't do?

Yes. You can blame someone for hurting you whether they hurt you by a malicious act that was done intentionally or by the most accidental oversight made out of pure ignorance. This is especially true if you were hurt in a way that profoundly changed your life for the worse.

Assigning blame is not at all the same as blindly hating or holding an inappropriate grudge against someone. To the extent that a person is honest, cares about treating others fairly and wants to maintain good relationships, they can accept appropriate blame for hurting others and will try to make amends and change their behavior accordingly. However, feeling the anger involved in appropriate, non-abusive and constructive blame is not easy.

Should I confront my parents/caregivers about how they neglected me?

Confronting the people who were supposed to nurture you in your childhood has the potential to be very rewarding, as it can prompt them to confirm the reality of painful experiences you had been keeping inside for a long time or even lead to a long overdue apology. However it also carries some big emotional risks. Even if they are intellectually and emotionally capable of understanding the concept and how it applies to their parenting, a parent who emotionally neglected their child has a strong incentive to continue ignoring or denying the actual effects of their parenting choices: acknowledging the truth about such things is often very painful. Taking the step of being vulnerable in talking about how the neglect affected you and being met with denial can reopen childhood wounds in a major way. In many cases there is a risk of being rejected or even retaliated against for challenging a family narrative of happy, untroubled childhoods.

If you are considering confronting (or even simply questioning) a parent or caregiver about how they affected you, it is well advised to make sure you are confronting them from a place of being firmly on your own side and not out of desperation to get the love you did not receive as a child. Building up this level of self-assured confidence can take a great deal of time and effort for someone who was emotionally neglected. There is no shame in avoiding confrontation if the risks seem to outweigh the potential benefits; avoiding a confrontation does not make your traumatic experiences any less real or important.

How can I heal from this? What does it look like to get better?

While there is no neatly itemized list of steps to heal from childhood trauma, the process of healing is, at its core, all about discovering and reconnecting with one's early life experiences and eventually grieving—processing, or feeling through—all the painful losses, deprivations and violations which as a child you had no choice but to bury in your unconscious. This goes hand in hand with reparenting: fulfilling our developmental needs that were not met in our childhoods.

Some techniques that are useful toward this end include

  • journaling: carrying on a written conversation with yourself about your life—past, present and future;

  • any other form of self-expression (drawing, painting, singing, dancing, building, volunteering, ...) that accesses or brings up feelings;

  • taking good physical care of your body;

  • developing habits around being aware of what you're feeling and being kind to yourself;

  • making friends who share your values;

  • structuring your everyday life so as to keep your stress level low;

  • reading literature (fiction or non-fiction) or experiencing art that tells truths about important human experiences;

  • investigating the history of your family and its social context;

  • connecting with trusted others and sharing thoughts and feelings about the healing process or about life in general.

You are invited to take part in the worldwide collaborative process of figuring out how to heal from childhood trauma and to grow more effectively, some of which is happening every day on r/EmotionalNeglect. We are all learning how to do this as we go along—sometimes quite clumsily in wavering, uneven steps.

Where can I read more?

See the sidebar of r/EmotionalNeglect for several good articles and books relevant to understanding and healing from neglect. Our community library thread also contains a growing collection of literature. And of course this subreddit as a whole, as well as r/CPTSD, has many threads full of great comments and discussions.


r/emotionalneglect 3h ago

Sharing insight I didn't realize how effed up my upbringing was until I told a buddy this weekend.

73 Upvotes

Apologies for the wall of text. I knew something was way off regarding my upbringing. My therapist confirmed it a long time ago. But I didn't really tell anyone else outside my wife and therapist about my upbringing...until this weekend.

I had a good buddy in town over the weekend...and we really talked more personally than we ever have. His divorce concluded in January of this year and he started talking about his therapy journey, the death of his father, and the guilt he felt over not apologizing to his father over something he said when he was 12 (though everything else was ok...they were close when his father passed).

Anyway, he asked about my father because he knew that my father's death screwed me up but not in the way he thought. So I told him...everything since he was asking questions. How he reacted to the things was where I was like, "Whoa, this was more effed up than I thought!"

I'll start by saying if not for my mom, I wouldn't be here today. She was there for me when nobody else was.

My father was never a part of my life despite living under the same roof as him for 19 years.

  1. I can count on two hands then number of father and son things we did together...in my life.
    a. Indian guides (1 week)
    b. 1 Boy Scouts Derby
    c. 2 Football games
    d. 1 baseball game
    e. 2 basketball games (Globetrotters and a college team) f. Nothing after age 14.

  2. Never showed up to any of my extracurriculars except for ONE notable exception. I played baseball, football, hockey, wrestled...and he never showed up to any game, practice or anything else. But the 1 year my short-ass played basketball, he was an assistant coach who never missed a practice or a game. Why? He played college basketball on scholarship.

  3. I had a high school project my freshman year in history class. I chose my topic and started working on it. My father...ever the perfectionist engineer, came down and started endlessly criticizing how 14 year-old me was working on the project...to the point I walked away. He finished it and I turned it in. I failed history out of spite (had to go to summer school) because I love history and my BA is in history. But the worst part? He kept that fucking project in the garage attic as a monument to my inadequacy for 20 years...to be the butt of the family joke every holiday season.

  4. I never got any dating advice until 3 months after I got my driver's license. Then it was "keep your peter in your pants." A little late there Dad. I lost my virginity within a month of driving. The advice I got was from my mom.

  5. He never called me as an adult to ask how I was doing. After a layoff, breakup, etc? Not a peep. I spoke to my Mom all the time. My Mom always asked how I was doing.

  6. Trigger warning:When I was 21, my first love broke up with me. Looking back, I don't blame her...but I was devastated and sunk into a deep depression. My mom and I got into a fight (which is where I broke because Mom was the only one that cared) and I grabbed the family handgun and held it to my head in front of her and said, "I'm tired of hurting, Mom. I don't want to do this anymore." My Mom said, "No Bob (alias), I love you" and fell to her knees sobbing with her arms out. I dropped the gun and she held me. She looked out for me after that the rest of that summer. My father KNEW about this event. He didn't say a word. His son holds a gun to his head in front of his wife...and he didn't say, "Gee son, please don't hurt yourself." Nope. Not a fucking word.

  7. A year later, I had gotten my crap back together, was back in college and I interviewed for an internship for a small consulting firm. I was very proud that I had beat out 20 other people for the position. I came home and my father said, "Why did they hire you?"

  8. When he retired, they had this retirement dinner for him with 125-150 people. He got up there and said, "I look forward to catching up with spending time with my son." Did he? Nope. I invited him to movies, sporting events, fishing, whatever. I asked him to suggest something. He never wanted to do anything with me. I stopped asking. This really bugged me over time.

I didn't understand any of this. I just knew I hated myself until I was 57 (started therapy at 54). I felt like an outsider inside my own home. I was told that my father was this great man and he was busy working to provide for us. That's a common household lie. But here's where the dominoes fell into place where I was able to see it all and understand it for the lie that it was. After awhile, I just leaned into being an outsider.

First domino was my father's death from COVID. I was not there when he died nor had I seen him for probably 2 months. I didn't cry. Not a tear. Not then and not since. Of course, that made me feel bad about myself because he's this great man and I'm a piece of shit, right? That just flipped me back into my addictions (see post history for details) that came back 10-fold. My therapist finally looked at me and said, "WTF is going on with you, you look unkempt, your nervous tics are back, etc." I came clean and told him everything. I got back on antidepressants which opened me up to processing it. My therapist explained, "You mourn the relationship you had with that person, you had no relationship with your father."

The 2nd domino was a few years later...my mother was dying and my sister and I were splitting duties watching my mom. I came over to spend the weekend with my mom, and my sister and I got into a fight. I told her that our father was never there for me...and he didn't love me. She responded, "You didn't earn it!" Bingo...lightbulb #2 went off. She earned it...I didn't. I never played the rigged game. At this point, I was in a good place mentally...so this was a bit of a kick...and my therapist pointed out that I should have never had to earn his love. Love was a currency and I had insufficient funds.

I had also spent considerable time talking to my mother about my youth. She knew some things...and she tried to get him to be a father. At the end, I didn't press any more because I didn't want her to feel guilty near the end of her life. But her reaction to other things

The 3rd domino was a couple years later...after I was happily remarried to the love of my life. We were watching The Brady Bunch of all things...and it just hit me...full force. I went to the bedroom full out sobbing. I could see it. Yes, Mike Brady is an idealized father...but he was always there for his kids. My father was never there...but I realized WHY. He CHOSE not to be.

He chose to golf rather than attend my baseball games. He chose to read the paper, rather than asking me how my school day was or helping me with homework. He chose to shoo me away while doing home improvement so I never learned those skills. He chose to spend at least 10 hours a week talking to an alcoholic college buddy of his to get him to go to rehab...which is more time than he ever spent having any kind of conversation with me...or even caring about me. He chose not to participate in any activities with me after he retired. That retirement speech bugged me up until a few months ago when I was in therapy and able to articulate why. That speech wasn't for me, it was for the other people in the audience so they could say, "Oh, what a good man and good father to now spend time with his son."

Those were his choices, and now I know the negative voice in my head was never my own. It was my father's. I've done ok for myself professional and now personally. He never knew who I was because he didn't care enough to find out. His loss.

I can't lie and say that it doesn't suck. It does. I spent 57 years of my life hating myself because I was chasing a ghost of love and approval I'd never get. It tainted every relationship I was in until my current one because I didn't understand intimacy or communication before therapy. BUT...I DID figure it out. The real tragedy would have been living my entire life feeling that way and dying alone. So I'm looking forward to my rest of my life instead of looking back and feeling sad.

If you got this far, thanks for reading.


r/emotionalneglect 9h ago

Discussion What are the red flags related to your parents. The kinda of events or moments that looking back on really shown that they weren't a good parent and that something is wrong with them. Not talking about the obvious monsters but the ones who fucked up in ways that a responsible parent wouldn't.

147 Upvotes

-Letting me stagnant though all of my twenties doing nothing with a massive and important chunk of my life.

-Never being concerned or worried about that kind of thing.

-Not teaching me any life skills like how to cook or even do laundry just basic stuff that a parent or who actual cares about their child would have done.

-Asked about me if I wanted a job after highschool I said no and then was simply treated that as good enough. As though asking absolves all responsibility. There was also zero follow up as in something like.

"You don't want a job but I'm going to help you find something anyway because that be good for you or I know your not interested but you need a job." Neither of those things ever happened.


r/emotionalneglect 1h ago

Seeking advice How to deal with my "fawn response" when i get yelled at?

Upvotes

(24M) Since i was a kid i've been yelled at by my dad when things don't go the way he wants. Sometimes i've had answered him with yelling too, and things got even worse. When i just quietly hung my head, he relaxed, but it was like swallowing shit, if you understand me... He lacks empathy at this point. He talks to others the way he wants, but doesn't like others talking to him like that.

I've met hundreds of person with this same behaviour, annd my response doesn't change. I just freeze. Sometimes i get the control and just keep doing my stuff quietly, but i still get hurt.

Like when i was working at a retail drugstore. Several times came a customer complaining and being agressive to me. I just freezed. Then i had to hear more complaints, from the customer and from my manager, for being slow. It was too much for my mind.

I felt like Alex from Clockwork Orange, when he is at the aversion therapy with Dr. Brodsky, being beaten and yelled at for no reason in order the become "civilized" hahahaha

It is frustrating to me, bc i want to just "don't care", but i cannot. It is a mind control i fail to have, but i like to change that. I don't want to feel week and harmless anymore.


r/emotionalneglect 6h ago

anyone else think their parents just loved tonic water as a child, not that they were just drinking 15 g&ts every night?

14 Upvotes

we used to have like 5 bottles in the cupboards that were restocked every week. i just assumed they loved tonic water with how often they said they needed more tonic water, or that we were out again lol.


r/emotionalneglect 1h ago

My house is so gross I can’t stand it

Upvotes

This feels like such a stupid thing to be venting about but i just can’t stand ittt. i live with my parents still ( i know im over 18 and i should be moved out by now, ive heard it a million times but life is hard and college is expensive ) anyways, my parents have always been messy people, like extremely messy. my whole life my house has always been disgusting, like animal feces that never gets picked up, dishes that never get done, trash that never gets taken out and so many more things. i do clean everyday to avoid these things but if i leave on a trip or get sick alll the mess just piles up again cause no one does it except for me. i also have some sort of ocd/anxiety around cleanliness so that doesn’t help. i’m just so tired of cleaning up after grown adults and living in a house that smells like a rotting dumpster. i don’t mean to talk bad about my parents, i love them very much I just feel so alone😢


r/emotionalneglect 6h ago

Seeking advice How to not be so scared?

12 Upvotes

I (18M) moved out without warning or telling my family the other day as I had been planning for the past year and in the following 6 days after that my mom has called me everyday crying and begging me to come home and guilt tripping me into staying on the line for more than an hour every time.

My mom says that she is more devastated than she’s ever been in her whole life and that she wouldn’t sleep tonight because she’d be up all night crying and my dad said what I did is super hurtful and that if I wanted to come back I need to apologize to him.

Today I decided to block them all and tell them I’d contact them again in a week. this whole time moved out I’ve been riddled with extreme stress and have had a lot of physical symptoms from it too my hands are shaking as I type this.. how do I calm down??

I’m still like shaking in fear my dad said if he found the friend I was staying with what he’d do to them would put him in jail.. I’m in my own place now but holy shit. my dad also used to get drunk and beat my mom and he’s also extremely vicious to his 87 year old mother. for my life he’s tried to put on a facade of being a nice person but I see right through it and my whole life my moms slept on the couch and all they do is argue argue argue. my moms not perfect either she’s pretty selfish and a horrible mother but she’s at least an alright person.. so how can I calm tf down?? blocking them all helped a little but I’m still shaking..

thanks in advance for reading this or commenting‘


r/emotionalneglect 10h ago

Adult daughters of emotionally unstable and immature mothers

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14 Upvotes

r/emotionalneglect 15h ago

Seeking advice why do parents expect you to tell them everything when they get mad at you for it?

36 Upvotes

My parents were talking to me about how I can tell them anything I want and I don’t need to hide it from them but when it does come to talking to them they always bring me down saying stuff that demotivates me. Of course I love my parents but how can they expect me to tell them stuff if they can’t support me with the proper words?


r/emotionalneglect 8h ago

Why does it always end up being your family being your biggest hater?

10 Upvotes

r/emotionalneglect 16h ago

Did anyone feel emotionally supported as a child, but increasingly emotionally neglected or invalidated by their parents as they became a teenager/adult?

39 Upvotes

I’ve been reading about childhood emotional neglect, but most accounts I find describe parents who were emotionally unavailable from early childhood. That doesn’t quite fit my experience.

As far as I can remember, before high school I was a sensitive child, and my mom was actually quite emotionally supportive when I was upset. I don’t remember feeling emotionally neglected as a young child.

The shift seemed to begin in my late teens. When I was around 16–17, I was in a genuinely difficult place: I was struggling socially at school, felt trapped in an environment I found very stressful, and often couldn’t sleep at night. I did turn to my mom for support during that period, but over time her responses became noticeably less patient and emotionally responsive.

By around 21–22, the change felt much more pronounced. When I expressed anxiety or distress, there was often very little emotional acknowledgment. Her responses were more likely to be things like, “There’s nothing you can do about it,” “Being anxious won’t help,” or simply confusion about why I was telling her in the first place. During conflicts, if I cried, I might hear, “What is there to cry about?” or “You’re too sensitive.”

I don’t mean that I expect to be comforted in exactly the same way I was as a small child, or that I expect my mom to regulate my emotions for me. What feels strange is that emotional support seems to have gone from something that was naturally offered when I was a child to something that is now treated as unnecessary, irrational, or something I should simply deal with on my own.

In other words, I don’t feel like I grew up without emotional support. I feel more like I aged out of being considered someone who should need or receive it—as though comforting a distressed child makes sense, but a distressed adult should simply regulate everything internally.

Realizing this has also made me look back at my childhood differently. I used to assume that when my mom comforted me, my sadness was being understood. Now I’m less certain. Sometimes I wonder whether she may have found some of my feelings just as difficult to understand back then, but comforted me anyway because I was a child. I obviously can’t know what she was thinking at the time, but the possibility has been unexpectedly sad to consider.

I know that, as an adult, it’s important to have emotional support outside of one’s parents. The complication for me is that because my mom was emotionally supportive when I was younger, I never felt much need to build friendships around showing my most vulnerable self. With friends, I tended to be the more composed or “mature” one.

Later, I realized that some of those friendships were no longer relationships I actually wanted to maintain, and I stopped forcing them just because I was afraid of having no friends. That left me in the strange position of realizing that the kind of emotional support I once assumed I could get from my mom was no longer really available either.

At this point, building a new social circle is something I see as a long-term process, starting more or less from scratch. I’m not looking for advice on how to make friends or for suggestions to simply get emotional support elsewhere. I’m specifically wondering whether anyone else has experienced this same age-related shift: a parent who was genuinely emotionally supportive when you were a child, but became increasingly dismissive of, confused by, or unwilling to engage with your emotional needs as you became a teenager and then an adult.


r/emotionalneglect 2h ago

Discussion DAE fight with only a couple of family members but freeze or fawn around the rest?

2 Upvotes

r/emotionalneglect 9h ago

Advice not wanted whenever i open up to someone i thought i could trust with my feelings, they always remind me as to why i don’t in the first place

7 Upvotes

i feel like that little girl again who got yelled at/punished for crying when all i wanted was to be comforted and held until i felt better. i’m not really trusting of others, so it’s rare of me to even open up. especially to close friends. but when i do, it means i trusted you with my heart. i still have a very hard time opening up about how i feel because everyone in my family is emotionally neglectful. in result of that, im very distrusting of others and have no friends. i can’t go after the career path i wanted to because it feels impossible having to battle with my mental health/physical health problems with no emotional support. i could’ve been a different person if only my parents had the emotional capacity to support me like they were supposed to.


r/emotionalneglect 1d ago

Discussion Crying when someone is nice to me

190 Upvotes

I was emotionally neglected as a child, I recently realized. I only had my mom, who worked long shifts to afford to care for me and my sisters, and my sisters themselves grew up too fast and left the house by the time I was nine. I had friends in elementary school, but then I moved and ended up going to a different middle school, and I had nobody. My family is Hispanic, they’re not used to talking about emotions, and my Spanish isn’t good enough for me to explain if I wanted to. From middle school on, I haven’t had a proper friend to talk to. And apparently work friends are just work friends, they’re not someone I can open up to, unless we started hanging out away from work. But we don’t.

I recently found out I have ADHD, so emotional regulation is an issue I struggle with already. I feel things strongly and I’m able to sympathize with people, but I rarely get that in return. But when I do get a little bit of kindness or respect from someone, I instantly want to cry. I’m not used to being seen. “Are you okay?” or a “Hey, it’s okay,” when they notice I’m overwhelmed is too much for me. I appreciate the sentiment so much, but I hate that I get teary.

I feel like a stray dog that is too wary to accept kindness but too hungry to live without it.


r/emotionalneglect 4h ago

Seeking advice I don’t know if I’m the problem or my mother is.

2 Upvotes

Hi everyone, I 20F have been going through a period of mild depression and unhappiness. It all unraveled from a bigger situation that kind of made me realize some things. Throughout my childhood I always felt like I had to be older than I was, I was always praised for my maturity, and emotional intelligence, but I was still a child.

My parents divorced when I was around 5-6, throughout my childhood my mother wasn’t the type parent that would bad talk my father all day long but she would discuss about it publicly and say stories about how he was cheater and a gambler in front of me. My brother M25 took the divorce very seriously, he suffered depression went through a rebellious phase and didn’t talk to my dad or his new wife for years. Eventually he accepted it but till this day he has traumatic sequels that are reflected in his daily life. Me as a 5 year old comprehended the steps that took them to divorce and didn’t have major problems (or so it thought) about the separation.

At 10 I got diagnosed with TD1 and because of the economic crisis in the country I was in we had to migrate to a nearby island which I have been living in for the past 8 years. I had to deal with many problem, since 12 I had concerns about financial issues, food issues, emotional issues I never harmed myself but did think about doing it and always felt like my existence wasn’t worth it. I always wanted my mother’s approval and validation, she’s not an affective person and it always hurt me since it was always me and her. Her family wasn’t nice to her, so she cut them off. So we quite literally have no one. In summary I never had the chance to be a kid and I mourn the fact that I didn’t have a childhood where I could remember myself being happy and innocent. I was always criticized and had many adjectives attached to me that felt negative, disorganized, dependent, dramatic, drama queen, a cry baby.

I was always overprotected, never could do anything didn’t grow up with friends and my mother always found things to criticize about every person, and obviously because of that, I always distanced myself because any slight change in her tone, or attitude would come off as disapproval and it filled me with anxiety. Presently, our relationship has decayed even further as I’m an adult and I’m trying to find myself and build my life, I still seek approval more so that I had a period where I doubted my relationship because her tone towards me discussing about how great my partner is were always dismissed, or answered with short dry responses. My mother went through a heartbreak, and she told me all about it, for the past 7 months I’ve been hearing about this guy which is out neighbor, on the daily, everything is surrounded by him, and always in negative connotations, how she doesn’t like it here, this country isn’t good for her, she has no opportunities, and I always try to remain positive, hopeful, I’m studying building my life I have a kind of decent job. I’m trying to do something but every attempt at a positive reconnection is always met with full negativity from her, and this ideology that I’m 20, and she doesn’t need to do anything for me. Which i understand I meant be there for me in a supportive relationship, if I say things about how I paid for my university alone, she gets angry and says I’m insinuating that she’s useless, or if I bring up how I feel she’s negative she goes on to say how she’s the worst mother ever, she never doesn’t anything right and fills me up with anxiety.

I’m trying to correct my patterns, I want to be able to live life fully, I tried talking to her and it never ends up in a positive conversation. And most times I’m the person to blame because my actions caused her to react x way or y way. And most conversations work as a comparison of I might not be perfect but I did an amazing job, and I wasn’t a careless mother which also feels like some kind of validation she seeks in return?

I don’t know I just want real insight and advice. Thanks everyone.


r/emotionalneglect 1h ago

Seeking advice No money for a therapist. Trying to heal myself. Any strategies and suggestions? Recently went NC a month ago. Trying to journal and read self help books

Upvotes

Pretty much what the title says. I still talk to my father who basically has learnt to adjust himself around my mother and just do as she says and stay in her shadows to escape her wrath. He advises me to do the same but I refuse to do it. Anyway people can swing anytime so I don’t want to be too reliant on my father either. I have about 9 months before I can’t move out of this house. I need a solid mechanism to survive because every penny I save is going towards later financial freedom and getting my own place to live.

How did people who couldn’t afford therapy and medicines help themselves? Are there any proven methods, channels, books? Currently I’ve ordered the book, “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents”. I also found a very cute pink old diary in my house to write my emotions into. I want to heal from this because I want to adopt a daughter in the future and I don’t want my wounds to affect my future daughter in any way. I also want to heal to finally have some peace in my mind. Has anybody pulled themselves out of this deep pit without any therapists, resources and big money?

Edit : changed a typo (the word book to the word title)


r/emotionalneglect 18h ago

Sitting with eight-year-old me.

18 Upvotes

It just occurred to me after I pulled a needle full of morphine out of my arm. What would the eight year-old me think about me if you had to spend every waking minute with me. He’d be afraid of me. And how would I act if I had eight year-old me with me everywhere I went. I definitely wouldn’t act like I’ve been acting. I’m so ashamed and disgusted with myself. I just want to be better.


r/emotionalneglect 2h ago

Do you tell your family members how they have affected you?

1 Upvotes

Do you communicate your feelings to family members that you struggle with, or do you distance yourself and create boundaries without communicating your decision to them?


r/emotionalneglect 2h ago

How can I disappoint my parents?

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1 Upvotes

r/emotionalneglect 2h ago

Hurt

1 Upvotes

It surprisingly hurts a LOT coming to the slow realisation that a parent never really cared. You are so blinded by "it's your parent, so of course they love you" so when the realisation hits, it leaves such a deep ache. Especially when you open your eyes and see that love being driven into a sibling, realising that they'll never feel that emptiness.


r/emotionalneglect 15h ago

Seeking advice why do parents expect you to tell them everything when they get mad at you for it?

9 Upvotes

My parents were talking to me about how I can tell them anything I want and I don’t need to hide it from them but when it does come to talking to them they always bring me down saying stuff that demotivates me. Of course I love my parents but how can they expect me to tell them stuff if they can’t support me with the proper words?


r/emotionalneglect 4h ago

Seeking advice Who else has a parent who loves but dislikes you

1 Upvotes

I'm debating on going no contact with my mother, or at the least, stop putting in all the effort. I was going to cut things off a year ago when she was on drugs, but in an attempt to salvage, I gave her another 100th chance. But I'm tired. I thought her behavior was chalked up to the drugs, but even now that she is sober, I think that my mother genuinely dislikes me. And if not that, she's holding a grudge against me.

It's as though she blames me for her problems. She doesn't say it, but I can feel It in her behaviors. I have tried speaking to her about her wrong doings, but she always somehow loops it back to me trying to prevent her from having a life... which... doesn't even make sense. So it must be coming from something else.

I'm an adult. 21 to be exact, but I thought that even despite that, she'd still be my mother. In her eyes, she sees otherwise. But I don't think she was ever really a mother in the first place, the only difference now is that she doesn't care to hide her disinterest and disdain towards me.

I'm the only one who's holding things together. I plan visits, I'm the one who contacts, and I'm always blown off. My time is never respected. She'll hold it out and say she's coming but at the very last minute she backs out after I have waited all day. This is a routine.

Sometimes I question why I've dealt with this for so long. And the answer is simple, she's my mom. And she isn't the devil. I know she loves me in her own strange way. She can be gentle. Kind. Caring. That's why I've tried. But kind words do not replace the neglect to raise me, the educational neglect, the screaming, drugs, fighting, sexual exposure. And then to top it all off, act like I am the problem in her life. Like I am too much. Like I'm the one who's dramatic for wanting to be treated like a daughter. I wouldn't treat a stranger the way she treats me.

I want to talk this through so badly with her, but at the end of the day, there is no point. She won't hear me. And even if she pretends to in the moment, it always backfires later. Once more, I will become the problem.

I almost came to a point of acceptance. She will never change, it just isn't in her due to her own traumas. She isn't capable. I was willing to look past that. But when a new man came into her life, she's changed so many things for him. Hell, she even arrives on time when it comes to him. My mom has been late all her life. The woman would probably be late to my own wedding.

I suppose my venting comes to this, do you have a parent who is like this? Are you still speaking with them? Do you regret it?


r/emotionalneglect 21h ago

My parents only like me when I’m perfect

16 Upvotes

I’m a 16(F) in high school and the title basically summarizes what my parents think of me

My parents prioritize academics and achievement heavily. Ever since I can remember I was put into classes to improve reading, math, sports, etc. I’m not complaining about this because obviously I was privileged enough to have this occur and I’m grateful for the experiences I got.

However the problems arise when I’m not academically perfect or in seek of achievement

Small examples include being abused when I didn’t finish the work they gave, yelled at when getting bad test scores, being told that I‘m not “serious” at the activities I do (at the age of like 7) or constantly being compared to peers. It made me develop this sort of anxiety to be the best I can be.

This was especially apparent during Covid , when quit a lot of the activities I did and my parents made me feel like straight shit. They completely ignored me and even when they did acknowledge me it was to crticize (academics, ecs, looks,etc). I will also mention I was severely depressed and had very low self esteem during this time.

I was afraid to be treated like that again so in the last three years or so I kind of rebuilt myself. I did everything they’ve ever wanted me to do and more academically, physically, and within extracurriculars. They treat me so much better it’s appalling, for once I feel like my parents actually like me. They do everything from driving me hours a day just to bring me to some sort of academic activity and will even pay hundreds for college counseling.

I feel like a trophy. I’m trying so hard to do things in my own accord, accomplish things just because I want to but this has been my whole life and for once I am treated well.


r/emotionalneglect 7h ago

How do I get over trauma so I can have a better relationship with my parents?

0 Upvotes

I’m going to give as much context as I can without giving my whole life story…

- Parents had a tumultuous relationship. Sure there was some love but also deceit, arguments, etc. that really put a scar on me. I basically did not feel emotionally safe in lots of ways and thinking back to it now, I can see how it has affected me to this day.
- Parents also immigrated. So, they uprooted the family to give a better life. They also grew up not the most well off at all soo…there’s typical scarcity mindset and what not that comes with it. Plus cultural differences as well.
- I was probably a latch key kid. I say probably because they were home after school and all but I wasn’t given a lot of attention.
- I was rarely home growing up once I hit 2nd grade. I my block had kids and parents who were friends with mine. I basically went there all the time because I finally had people who wanted to spend time with me.
- whenever I’m around my parents, although I’m a grown adult and they’re older, I get stressed out whenever I’m around them. I shut down and if they try to ask about my life I get really angry sometimes. Like I don’t want them to know anything.
- given all the above, I can understand how they grew up in a different time, did what they could with what they know, and worked hard to give me and my brother a better life. I know that intellectually. But my body and mind react in a way that really stresses me out.

So basically I hung out with some cousins as I visited my motherland recently and some stories they told me about our family made a lot of my parents behavior make more sense. It tore a hole in my heart a bit because it made me think about a lot of stuff and my feelings on everything. And it’s all really bittersweet. Even after chatting I sat and cried in my room for some reason thinking about all of it.

I want to forgive and move forward and just care more about them without being how I was before. It’s just really hard to deal with. If anyone has dealt with this I’d love to hear how you healed.


r/emotionalneglect 11h ago

Seeking advice How to become secure attachment

2 Upvotes

Hi there!

Look like I am fearful avoidant.

I'd love to fix and become secure.
How do I do this?

https://ibb.co/9kgh0pZT

https://ibb.co/gbGLsLtP

https://ibb.co/N2DPKpQj